Archive for July, 2012

A year or so ago, some friends and I did the 30 Day Song Challenge on Facebook, and every day for 30 days we had to post a song that described some situation or answered some question.

Day 22 asked us to post a song that we listen to when we’re sad, and I posted Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” One of my friends asked why I would listen to a sad song when I’m sad, as opposed to a happy song which could, feasibly, put me in a better mood.

What…?

The only answer I could come up with was:

“I don’t know. Probably the same reason I listen to happy songs when I’m happy.”

I don’t know why I listen to sad songs when I’m sad. I didn’t (and still don’t) think it was that odd.

Maybe it’s that misery loves company. Maybe it’s that sometimes we just have to wallow it out before we can start getting better.

Of course not!

But…what if she did?

That’s the focus of the Celebrities as Real People: Not a Pretty Picture slide over at Shine from Yahoo!, and if you’ve ever wondered what Madonna, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Beyonce, and Jay-Z would look like as real people, head on over.

Sure, we know that “real people” aren’t just people who take awkward photos (besides, celebs take their fair share of unfortunate pictures, too), but it’s still fun to see what Rihanna would look like as a middle-aged…choir director? What could beat seeing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie take advantage of the $7.99 Favorite Pose Package down at their local Sears?

Which of your favorite celebrities would you like to see in regular folk photos?

Late last month, HarperCollins and Mitch Winehouse, father of the late English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, released “Amy, My Daughter.”

“Amy, My Daughter” chronicles the life of the 27-year-old talent, from her childhood to her untimely death from alcohol poisoning – all from the point of view of a loving, grieving,and proud father.

Thanks to Rolling Stone, we can check out an excerpt from “Amy, My Daughter.”

The following bit highlights some of the professional and creative processes that went into creating “Back to Black,” Winehouse’s second studio album, and quite possibly the post popular with hits like “Back to Black,” “You Know I’m No Good” and “Rehab”:

It was fascinating to watch her: she was very much in control, and she was a perfectionist, redoing phrases and even words to the nth degree. When she wanted to listen to what she’d sung, she’d get them to put it on a CD, then play it in my taxi outside, because she wanted to know how most people would hear her music, which would not be through professional studio systems. In the end, Back to Black was made in just five months.

Indie folk rock band the Avett Brothers is set to release its seventh full-length studio album, The Carpenter, on September 11, 2012.

According to founding member Scott Avett, the new album deals with some deep issues – namely, life and death – and the group’s personal accounts of those issues.

Since this album’s been done, we’ve dealt with more and much heavier versions of that as well. So, maybe that’s added to the closeness that we hold them to us. As we get older, a lot of the things we said in the past that we thought we believed about understanding life or death, I don’t know that we understood them as well as we do now and I don’t know that we understand them now, but we’re closer to an understanding.

Glen Campbell has wrapped up his Goodbye Tour.

The 76-year-old country music icon announced the tour back in 2011, along with his Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis, and on June 24, 2012, he played his final show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

The show began with tributes from some of Campbell’s friends including Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, and Jackson Browne, and the hour-long set Campbell played included classics like “Gentle On My Mind” and new material from his final album Ghost On The Canvas.

The same month, Campbell released a touching video for his song, “A Better Place,” on his official YouTube channel.

(Please forgive my week-long hiatus. Over the past week, the East Coast was hit pretty hard with extreme heat waves and severe thunderstorms, leading to long-term power outages and, of course, no Internet access. It seems the worst is behind us, and I hope to be back for good!)

Last week I told you about the Offspring’s new album, Days Go By, and the recently released title track, which Offspring frontman Dexter Holland says has a “message of hope.”

I’ve heard the song several times on the radio (if you haven’t, you can stream the entire album courtesy of Rolling Stone), and I can see how the lyrics might inspire hope in some listeners.

It’s a catchy tune, but, admittedly, it doesn’t inspire much hope in me. That’s only because “Days Go By” isn’t really my style. However, it DID make me think of songs that DO inspire hope in me – some of them because of their lyrics, some because of their music, and some because of both.